Last week, I had the opportunity to take iboga (ibogaine) for a second time – more than five years since my visit to Africa. I did this at a wonderful clinic in northern Mexico, open for treating substance abuse but is also available for those who want to try iboga for personal or spiritual reasons. (I have put contact info for the clinic in "Special Announcements"). The main aspect of this second trip was my long conversation with "Mr. Iboga," who appeared to me as a black man in a 1940s-looking suit. In my initial vision, he led me up the stairs to the "Castle of the Bwiti." I was a 5-year-old girl in this vision, and he was holding my hand.

Iboga gave me direct, telegraphed answers to my questions. I asked what iboga was, and the answer I got was: "PRIMORDIAL WISDOM TEACHER OF HUMANITY!" Much of my trip focused on my personal faults, which were displayed in detail, and my anger at myself for being unable to correct them. The answer I got was "GET STRAIGHT! DO WHAT IT TAKES TO STRAIGHTEN OUT THE SHIT!" I was given insight in how to become a "spiritual warrior," by finding the right path and then refusing to deviate, not being deterred, no matter what. I asked, What should I do? "WORK HARDER!" I also realized, "I am lucky!"

My sense was that "Mr. Iboga" was a form of enlightenment mind, like the Buddha, who had chosen a different form, as a plant spirit rather than human teacher, to work with humanity. I asked if he would consider incarnating as a human, and the answer I got was, basically, "already did that" – as if, in some previous cycle, he had passed through the stages of evolution we were now navigating. I also had the thought that "dimensions" was too rigid a term for psychedelics, as well as everything that preserves a hard "subject-object" distinction. More accurate would be to talk about vibrations and intervals and resonances. Iboga causes a loud ringing in the ears, and I thought this might be something like a dial tone, signifying a change in the frequency you are picking up. Is iboga a direct hotline to "GOD" (Galactic Ordering Directorate)?

At one point, I also went flying through the solar system and into the sun, where angelic beings were shooting around the core at a tremendous rate. My intuitive understanding was that every planet and star has its own form of manifestation of consciousness depending on its level of evolution and vibration. We are the manifestation of Earth’s consciousness, its sensory organs and self-reflective capacities, at its present state of evolution. We are changing quickly because the Earth is in an accelerated state of transformation.

Some information had to do with what might possibly be (?) "previous incarnations." I thought of my allergies to cats and dogs, and realized that what caused allergies was "fear of animality." The conditions for this fear is set up in one’s previous lives. I saw particular images of myself with two others as High Priests in tall hawk’s head masks, perhaps Babylonian? I couldn’t really identify the historical context, nor do I take this that seriously.

I thought about the terrible state of the world – saw images of possible nuclear war, sheets of red fire devouring cities – and the answer I received was: "GOD IS JUST!"
For a while, I also saw sickening images of "Grey Aliens" landing on a post-cataclysm Earth, and herding hordes of suburban Americans into their UFOS (this narrative taken from David Jacobs’ book, The Threat). Later, when I went over apocalypse images again, the message was: "EVERYTHING IS SAFE IN GOD’S HANDS!" This message, Biblically caricatured as it may sound, actually gave me considerable comfort.

What I took from this trip was support for the theory that iboga was, in fact, "The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" in the Bible. Its placement in equatorial Africa and its stern moral clarity make it the best candidate for this role. Its "primordial wisdom teachings" on good and evil are not abstract, but extremely personal and direct. While not the most delightful experience, the iboga trip is one that I would recommend for most people. The doctor at the clinic says that their success rate for treating addiction seems to be running at about 50%.

Wow!
That's all I can seem to muster at the moment, WOW! I found this site! I am halfway through your book Daniel and I seem to have come across one of those Most Important Reading Materials which so easily ties the psychedelic experience to our inherent Spiritual Nature. I recall when reading Terrance McKenna's "True Hallucinations" of experiencing a similar WOW.
And to boot, this accompanying website also has a discussion forum!! Double WOW!

Thank you for providing the opportunity to be able to take part in somewhat real time discussions with you and everyone else who might also share some similar experiences.

I have been talking with a friend of a friend who is in serious trouble with opiates. I am teaching him about Iboga and what it may be able to do for him. I know of a gentleman named Marc Emery (publisher of Cannabis Culture) in Vancouver who has recently opened an Iboga clinic to treat addicts. That's one option. But I was wondering where this clinic in Mexico is? I couldn't access the "special announcements" forum.

Jeremy

__________________"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
-- Bucky Fuller

Here is a report I submitted to erowid of a moderate dose of ibogaine. It's less dramatic than Daniel's, but may still be of some interest. I'd like to read more reports of iboga/ibogaine trips, at whatever dosage level.

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DOSE : 400 mg oral Ibogaine

BODY WEIGHT : 86 kg

I had planned to take a gram or so of ibogaine, but the friend who was going to be my sitter had to cancel. Finally I decided to take a smaller dose, and took 400mg. one morning by myself. That works out to approximately 5 mg/kg, about half the dose I'd originally planned on.

The first thing I noticed was subtle body sensations, ramping up to powerful pulses over half an hour or so, especially in my arms. I've heard that muscles at rest have a rapid rythmic pulsing that we are not normally conscious of, and I speculate that I may have been sensing that. The sensations became more pervasive, like currents of energy throughout my body - sort of like ants crawling all over me, but I chose not to dwell on that comparison. It felt to me as though my subtle energy body (I may be speaking metaphorically here) was beoming active, expanding and unfolding. My visual field didn't alter much; I kept expecting a visual, dreamlike sequence to start but it never quite did. However, I noticed that my thoughts were becoming quite bizarre, and that's when I realized I was in fact tripping fairly hard. It was as though dreams were happening in my mind, and I could sense them but not quite see them - as though they were separated from the part of my mind that I was consciously identified with by a dark curtain. I've had this sort of feeling before, both under the influence of psychedelics and in other altered states, such as in the hypnagogic state.

The dreamlike thought that triggered my awareness that I was tripping was the following. I 'saw' two men facing each other on a city street, making eye contact. They suddenly jump in unison into a void - an infinate black nothingness. Just as suddenly they are back on the street, still making eye contact, at which point they run screaming in opposite directions.

For two to three hours I was in a very fluid dreamlike space. I would imagine all sorts of things, often very personal - e.g. the autopsy of someone I loved who died a couple of years ago, followed by my own autopsy. My thoughts ranged all over the map, from that sort of personal material, to the evolution of consciousness, to how politicians distract us from important issues with spectacular trivia. At the point I was thinking about that, I remembered reading that people will have visions under ibogaine that seem to be about global events, but can more usefully be analyzed as a sort of dream, being symbolically about your own life. (For example, someone might imagine a horrible impending war, but it could really mirror a conflict in their own psyche.) I started asking myself if that was true in my case, and thinking about how I might use these same sort of distraction techniques. Around this time I started getting a strange fluttering distortion in the upper left periphery of my visual field, and began to divert my attention to it to see if it would unfold into something more revealing. Then I realized that this was an excellant example of distracting oneself from more important matters. The next day, still thinking of this image, I realized that I often use intellectual thought as a way of distracting myself from a more direct confrontation with my issues.

I feel I was only scratching the surface of the ibogaine state, but I can see the potential of this substance as a tool for self-exploration.

I did not experience nausea per se, but during the peak of the trip my head felt strange, and I felt somewhat disconnected from my body. I was able to walk to the bathroom when necessary, slowly and with a bit of difficulty. I felt spacey and lethargic for quite a while after I took it, not recovering fully in that sense for about three days.

I felt quite capable of dealing with this doseage alone (fortunately, since I didn't have a sitter), but I think at a significantly increased dose a sitter would be a really good idea. Also, based on the strange sensations in my head (especially when I moved) and my problems with balance and coordination, I suspect that at higher doses nausea would become a factor for me.